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Basic Description: The gamemode currently suffers from some of the worst gameplay and is poorly recieved by the playerbase, changes made to them were not only in their gameplay but also an established culture, chain of command, biology and specializations. More indepth info in the google doc below, these changes were discussed with @Zundy prior to this post, to be more specific, on the 20th of Novemember.

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So, does the crew of Aurora know about changelings' existence now? Or not? What's the point of all of this pile of text being outlined if it will not be used by crew? Antag mechanics don't necessarily require lore backing them up.

Edited December 4 by VTCobaltblood

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How will this actually mechanically change the changelings? The number one complaint of lings are that their whole toolset and playstyle goes against RP and is very murderbony, most of the time. Or does it just give lore for the changelings?

Also, recycling is a very healthy way of saving the Earth. Also, you are scum.

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So, does the crew of Aurora know about changelings' existence now? Or not? What's the point of all of this pile of text being outlined if it will not be used by crew? Antag mechanics don't necessarily require lore backing them up.

Changeling lore will be addressed by the changeling players themselves, while I have a complete history and more background information in a seperate doc Im still waiting for a more official response from the lore team on how they wish to address this due the fact that a xenophobic shapeshifting race wont go unnoticed.

On the topic of why I posted this here? Its a better way to bring this forward to the lore team as well due to the lack of any real antag lore that goes hand in hand with the gamemode

38 minutes ago, DeadLantern said:

How will this actually mechanically change the changelings? The number one complaint of lings are that their whole toolset and playstyle goes against RP and is very murderbony, most of the time. Or does it just give lore for the changelings?

Also, recycling is a very healthy way of saving the Earth. Also, you are scum.

Im adding the Shin'kali, you can expect me to completely ruin the round dynamic.

Changelings currently suffer from their beaten path being forced to murderbone, while this is still offered with the Warrior trait tree alternatives exist, the best example being the Infiltrator trait tree and to certain extend the Abnormal trait tree due to both having skills that support either a very secretive playstyle with the Infiltrator rather relying on roleplay and trickery to reach their self proclaimed goal, may that either be to replace a certain crew member or to gain a certain amount of information and the Abnormal trait tree focusing on slowly building up a favorable position, with very noticeable abnormalities happening later on due to how the tree was designed ( More powerful mob spawning buildings being 8th trait, the point where the danger is more or less public. ) while also forcing options for more favorable cooperative playstyles between the lings due to the very supportive role the Abnormal trait tree represents during the early traits and its final form.

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On the topic of why I posted this here? Its a better way to bring this forward to the lore team as well due to the lack of any real antag lore that goes hand in hand with the gamemode﻿

Antag lore is extremely open-ended by design. Absolutely no people are supposed to know it, as all such antags are first contact. Antags are not supposed to care much about it. If antags do want to care about their lore, they're free to think it up themselves if they consider it beneficial for their gimmick. This, on the other hand, explains everything there is to explain about lings, making their lore extremely rigid, yet has absolutely no use in-game except justifying game mechanics. Why is this needed?

Edited December 4 by VTCobaltblood

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Antag lore is extremely open-ended by design. Absolutely no people are supposed to know it, as all such antags are first contact. Antags are not supposed to care much about it. If antags do want to care about their lore, they're free to think it up themselves if they consider it beneficial for their gimmick. This, on the other hand, explains everything there is to explain about lings, making their lore extremely rigid, yet has absolutely no use in-game except justifying game mechanics. Why is this needed?

The only antags who are unknown are those of either magical properties or those who completely comitted to covert operations, those being the ninja, vampire and wizard. While I see absolutely no problems with these antags regarding their rather open-ended lore. The syndicate page already provides a somewhat effective guide regarding the recruitment of said character, may that either be willingly joining them, blackmail or other methods left open.

While I personally dislike some of the more open-ended and more "realistic" antags such as merc, traitor, pirate and rev have some groundwork provided for them, giving people a solid foundation to plan their gimmicks on. Gimmicks tend to fall apart rather quickly when much of their reasoning is based on "Because its fun". Many complaints about gimmicks is that they at the end dont tell much of a story, a character is forcefully twisted to be the sudden bad guy with no reasonable explanation behind it. Due to that I rather much find what you describe as a rigid lore a more solid base to plan my round on, as I can essentially tell a story when Im actually provided with a background of said race, organization or anomaly.

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The syndicate page already provides a somewhat effective guide regarding the recruitment of said character, may that either be willingly joining them, blackmail or other methods left open.﻿﻿

Which is the recruitment method of, uh, any secretive underworld organization ever. But it doesn't matter.

16 minutes ago, DaTimeSmog said:

merc, traitor, pirate and rev have some groundwork provided for them

Like what? Traitors/mercs have the Syndicate, yes. What do revs and raiders have?

16 minutes ago, DaTimeSmog said:

Gimmicks tend to fall apart rather quickly when much of their reasoning is based on "Because its fun". ﻿

Thing is, ling isn't an open-ended gamemode already. Making an original ling gimmick is quite difficult. You've made it much harder by giving them lore with no open ends.

16 minutes ago, DaTimeSmog said:

Due to that I rather much find what you describe as a rigid lore a more solid base to plan my round on, as I can essentially tell a story when Im actually provided with a background of said race, organization or anomaly.

How would you tell a story about changelings if the gamemode consists of you just consuming the genetic material of the crew? Rounds last for only 2 hours. As I see changeling myself, the main goal is to not get caught as changeling. So we can cut away, like, 1:30 of that round because for that time, nobody knows you're a changeling. 30 minutes left. Someone does catch the changeling. Would you talk with the alien that has been murdering your fellow co-workers and turning your shift into a paranoid hell about what legislative system for obtaining citizenship it has (for the little period of time you now have, and that is hoping that the ling does not try to kill security right away since it's got nothing to lose now), or kill it with fire immediately? Personally, I'd pick the latter. That is, in my opinion, the problem with the gamemode. Xenobiologists are pretty rare, and a very significant chunk of them are one-off players who never pick the job again, so "hurr durr give changeling to science!1" would not really work, not to mention it's basically sending the ling to chairRP with 1-2 people without involving anyone else.

Edited December 4 by VTCobaltblood

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Like what? Traitors/mercs have the Syndicate, yes. What do revs and raiders have?

Revs are hard to describe if I must admit, due to the multitude of motivations they can have, the rather lacking secruity of their announcement doesnt help much often and in that sense its a problem when it comes to the nature of a fake announcement itself. Raiders fall under the same category but their motivations can be often boiled down to "We want money."

17 minutes ago, VTCobaltblood said:

How would you tell a story about changelings if the gamemode consists of you just consuming the genetic material of the crew? Rounds last for only 2 hours. As I see changeling myself, the main goal is to not get caught as changeling. So we can cut away, like, 1:30 of that round because for that time, nobody knows you're a changeling. 30 minutes left. Someone does catch you as a changeling. Would you talk with the alien that has been murdering your fellow co-workers and turning your shift into a paranoid hell, about what legislative system for obtaining citizenship it has (for the little period of time you now have, and that is hoping that the ling does not try to kill security right away since it's got nothing to lose now), or kill it with fire immediately? Personally, I'd pick the latter. That is, in my opinion, the problem with the gamemode. Xenobiologists are pretty rare, and a very significant chunk of them are one-off players who never pick the job again, so "hurr durr give changeling to science!1" would not really work, not to mention it's basically sending the ling to chairRP with 1-2 people without involving anyone else.

Motivations can be conveyed over a simple one to one dialog in a chairRP situation, I do however see your concern regarding rounds ending with the sudden reveal that it was a changeling round all along however I can only see this happening during an Infiltrator ling round which has gone unnoticed for the entirety of the round. The remaining two have elements to them that make them rather obvious to spot, at which point you can think to yourself why a murderous organism is onboard and why it is suddenly chewing up the crew, the station hull and spreading its weird weeds around. If you deliver every piece of information via dialog then thats no good and while Im not someone who can easily predict the way people will convey some of the information currently on the doc. Round time is a universal problem as often more extensive ideas have to be dropped as unless they're extremely well made and grab the attention of the majority of the station its most likely gonna be a 2 hour shuttle call no matter what.

Edited December 4 by DaTimeSmog

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Revs are hard to describe if I must admit, due to the multitude of motivations they can have, the rather lacking secruity of their announcement doesnt help much often and in that sense its a problem when it comes to the nature of a fake announcement itself. Raiders fall under the same category but their motivations can be often boiled down to "We want money."﻿

Same logic can be applied to lings. "I require genetic material." There is no lore supporting revs or raiders, which is exactly the point - you make it up yourself based off of what works. There are some criminal organizations on the wiki, yet the gamemode does not force you to work for any of these. That's good antagonist lore - open-ended and gives leeway for the player.

1 minute ago, DaTimeSmog said:

do however see your concern regarding rounds ending with the sudden reveal that it was a changeling round all along

That's not my concern. Changeling rounds are pretty obvious to spot by security investigating lings, but it would be metagaming (presumably? the guidelines just generally say you aren't supposed to know about antags, but actual identifying guidelines are broken). My concern is how sudden a ling reveal is IC-wise, not OOC-wise. You wouldn't reasonably have the time to expose this lore, nor any reason to, as people will actively try to kill you once you're exposed, and as such, it'd be unused, and thus, useless.

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hat's not my concern. Changeling rounds are pretty obvious to spot by security investigating lings, but it would be metagaming (presumably? the guidelines just generally say you aren't supposed to know about antags, but actual identifying guidelines are broken). My concern is how sudden a ling reveal is IC-wise, not OOC-wise. You wouldn't reasonably have the time to expose this lore, nor any reason to, as people will actively try to kill you once you're exposed, and as such, it'd be unused, and thus, useless.

Giving an reason to actually gain information either by actually giving IC research or god forbid expanding the xenobiologist role outside of chairRP as you're trying to understand what the alien on the other side is screeching would be a way to go. With the changes you can argue that two lings are most likely not gonna take the same trait tree and as such are not gonna show obvious similiarities between their actions or the evidence they leave behind.

2 minutes ago, VTCobaltblood said:

Same logic can be applied to lings. "I require genetic material." There is no lore supporting revs or raiders, which is exactly the point - you make it up yourself based off of what works. There are some criminal organizations on the wiki, yet the gamemode does not force you to work for any of these. That's good antagonist lore - open-ended and gives leeway for the player.

The main reason why Changelings are active on the Aurora is either to gain intelligence, disrupt the actions onboard on the Aurora or possibly to may I shudder here, complete a given objective that can be otherwise ignored if the player feels like it. Objectives have always been somewhat enjoyable to me as they have provided a somewhat steady path to what I can possibly plan out. However I can understand why this wouldnt be a convincing arguement to you as you earlier stated that you rather more enjoy a more open antag experience

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Giving an reason to actually gain information either by actually giving IC research or god forbid expanding the xenobiologist role outside of chairRP as you're trying to understand what the alien on the other side is screeching would be a way to go

I've already explained why this doesn't really work. Not to mention, I have never called xenobiology a chairRP role. Read what I write.

4 minutes ago, DaTimeSmog said:

complete a given objective that can be otherwise ignored if the player feels like it.